The long anticipated Gundabad Catapult Troll and War Drakes of Rhun recently went up for pre order, and we’ve been lucky enough to check the kits out a little early to see how they go together and what they look like against some other models in the range. We’d normally try and have these painted to show off as part of our unboxing and review, but unfortunately we didn’t have enough time – but to make sure you can see how they go together and what they look like in the flesh we decided to put the article out now, and we’ll update with painted images once it’s finished!

Massive thanks to Games Workshop for sending over the Gundabad Catapult Troll and the War Drakes for us to check out on the site. If you would like to support the site then why not order your Middle-Earth goodies through our affiliate Element Games and save yourself some money too?

We’ve also filmed a full unboxing and review of the new kits which you can see just below or over on YouTube

So without further ado let’s take a look at the new kits!

Gundabad Catapult Troll

So I suppose we have to start this article with the big one, the Gundabad Catapult Troll! This is a Forge World Resin kit and costs £140. Surprisingly, this comes in a box with full artwork, which is not something I was expecting after building other large Forge World kits before – that said, Smaug does have full box art too, so there is precedent for it! Whether that means that one day these will be sold in regular Warhammer stores is something that’s always been debated, but is interesting that it does have a big colourful box.

This is a big kit with around 70 parts (most of which make up the Goblin and the Catapult itself), so make sure to check over all the parts and give them a proper clean with soapy before you start working on it. Resin kits are freed from the molds by using a release agent, and if left on the models this can cause glue and paint to not stick properly. Best to make sure this doesnt happen by giving it a good scrub just to release that layer.

The kit actually builds in a few sub assemblies, with the main body being build first, then the entire Catapult structure before building the goblins (which are around 6 pieces each and a little fiddly to put together). Most of the connections for the catapult do have contact points that are easily found once you’ve dry fitted the pieces, but for the goblins they are a little more tricky

There’s a number of handles and leavers that the goblins use for controlling the device – the instructions have you attach these to the goblins before attaching to the Catapult, but I actually found it was easier to position these if I attached them to the Catapult first. This way I could leave the goblins seperate so I can pop them on a spare base and paint them up before attaching to the Gundabad Catalpult Troll once finished.

The Catapult assembly just rests on his shoulders, so it’s actually handy to leave it this way so that it can be detached for transport too.

He’s a pretty big kit, with him towering over Treebeard in the above image – though while he’s still a little small compared to the likes of Smaug, he is certainly a heavy and hefty piece of resin once he’s completed! With the Troll Brute at £99, this seems about right at £140 – and it’s certainly a fun build – just watch the arms on the goblins as it takes a little work to get them in the right position!

Overall this is a great centrepiece model and I can’t wait to get him painted up!

War Drakes of Rhun

Up for pre order alongside the Gundabad Catapult Troll are the War Drakes of Rhun

A much smaller kit at £31.50, but I still really enjoyed working on these guys too!

What’s really nice about this kit is the fact that each drake has two neck pieces and two head pieces so that you can have each of them looking left or right with an open or closed mouth. This means that if you have 4 of them in your army you can make each one look different. A really nice little touch which gets rid of the feeling of having duplicate models in your force – I really wish the Hill Trolls had done this to let you mix up the poses!

Again with the review deadline looking there’s not been chance to get paint on these, but I’ll be updating the article with painted images as soon as they are done!

The Middle-Earth Strategy Battle Game has had lots of love over the last year, and with more War of the Rohirrim releases on the horizon I feel there’s going to be lots more to come for the game

These kits are up for pre order right now and are released 6th September

Games Workshop provided Sprues & Brews with free copies for review purposes.

Published by Matt Crowther

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